All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds of his day for himself is a slave. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

(Book: Human All Too Human https://amzn.to/3wdu4Ow)

(Art: Illustration by Steve Cutts)

I was wondering whether we, as Westerners, are fooling ourselves to a great extent. We are willing to imagine that we are a tolerating society, that we have welcomed all the forms of the past, all the cultural forms that are foreign to us, that we welcome behavior, language and sexual deviances. I wonder if this is an illusion… In other words, if with the purpose of knowing insanity we must first exclude the insane. Perhaps we could say that with the purpose of knowing other cultures undoubtedly, we have had to not only marginalize them, not just look down on them over our shoulder, but also exploit them, conquer them and in a way, through violence, keep them silenced. ~Michel Foucault

(Book: Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings https://amzn.to/3QI4I3C)


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Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests'. ~Albert Camus

(Book: Notebooks 1935-1942 https://amzn.to/3PFQkHC)

Atheist or Agnostic? What is the difference?
Bertrand Russell (1947)

"I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist". It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.

None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer truly exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job.

You could not get such proof.

Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line."

— Bertrand Russell, Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? A Plea For Tolerance In The Face Of New Dogmas (1947)

Image: Bertrand Russell, 22 November 1950.

• Background: Bertrand Russell disputed the existence of deities early in his life doubting their reality in his early teens. Although Russell held philosophy alone could not prove or disprove the existence of supernatural beings, he strongly thought that the world's seemingly countless religions were based largely on superstition.

Russell held that a religious outlook essentially impeded scientific knowledge and increased dependency. Russell also thought the particular "philosophical possibility" for the existence of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god was on the same footing essentially as any other supernatural deity, and frequently used the Homeric gods as his personal example.